Katell Quillévéré and Hélier Cisterne retrace, in six episodes, the birth, around the supreme group ntm, of a cultural movement.
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While French cinema is tearing up on the question of its survival against the backdrop of hemorrhage of entries, two filmmakers come to pose there which could be one of the best series of the year. Ironically, the biopic that Katell Quillévéré and Hélier Cisterne devote to NTM and a few other pioneers of French rap is the fruit of collaboration between a television channel (Arte), a film producer (the films of Aries) and a platform (Netflix). As if it needed proof that these apparently unnatural alloys can arise the best. The couple of filmmakers seizes, in six neat episodes, the birth of an ecosystem, a sound and an industry which has become, some thirty years later, ultra-dominant.
To hear the self-taught and ultra-leafy productions of today, it is difficult to imagine the crafts of the beginnings. It is this sound and visual hack that Le Monde of tomorrow is reconstituting, on a handful of years which go roughly of the phenomenon “H.I.P. H.O.P.” appeared in 1984 on TF1 at the riots of Vaulx-en-Velin (Rhône) in the suburbs Lyonnaise, following the death of a young man fleeing the police in 1990.
At the beginning of the 1980s, Daniel (Andranic Manet), “Blanc-Canad” vinyl collector and apprentice DJ, returns from the United States of funk full ears and the desire to battle it out with turntables. Shy, he is denied by Béatrice (Léo Chalié), a grocer’s daughter who earns a few sous in peep-shows and encourages her to monetize his talent. At the same time, the young Bruno (Anthony Bajon) and Didier (Melvin Boomer) deceive the gloom of Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis) by repeating Break Dance movements on a piece of Lino. Graffeurs at night, they meet at the foot of the walls of the Virginia city (Laïka Blanc-Francard), a dancer who likes to challenge boys with paint bomb.
Nearby, in Paris, it was the era of the illegal block parties (“neighborhood festivals”) in Stalingrad, open antennas and smoky freestyles on Nova radio. Under their name of graffiti artist, JoeyStarr and Kool Shen, Bruno and Didier take hold of the microphone and are inspired by their life in the suburbs for Slamer. Without money but with the energy of adolescence, Supreme NTM is preparing to detect all those who claim that “French rap does not sell”.
Finely political scenario
Le Monde of tomorrow makes a moving story of this bygone time when people went out to dance, discovered new sounds in nightclubs, venerated the DJs and the record stores. When making rap, talking about it, spreading it, did not report much if it is not the intuition to participate in something important.
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